Hemispheres – April 7, 2011

We’ve got some good stuff this week, guys, and it only took until yesterday for most of it to show up. Seriously, I don’t even know. It’s like everyone went to sleep until yesterday then they were all like “holy shit, that guy at Polygamerous doesn’t have any links, let’s do all the interesting stuff all at once!”

Well, thanks.

• We don’t know much about Vanillaware’s Grand Knights’ History other than that it’s turn-based, but boy does it have some big, pretty sprites.
• Stellar Wii RPGs Xenoblade and The Last Story have been sitting dormant with absolutely no word from Nintendo about a US or European release for either mostly because they hate fun, but it appears maybe they’re moving now – Nintendo registered thelaststory.com, as well as xenobladechronicles.com. The latter, Xenoblade Chronicles, turns out to be the name for the English-language release of Xenoblade in Europe, confirmed by Nintendo’s UK wing.
• Meanwhile, Nintendo appears to be moving on a new Wii action-RPG, Pandora’s Tower: Until I Return To Your Side. Your primary weapon appears to be a chain (hello, Wii control gimmick) that you use to grab and attack enemies and swing around the environment. The goal? Ceres, the girl pictured in all the promotional art for Pandora’s Tower, bears a curse, and the only way to remove it is by feeding her the flesh of the monsters in the tower, which you – her friend Ende – must retrieve. Isn’t that usually how you GET curses? Anyway, here’s a trailer courtesy of Tiny Cartridge:
  
  I think my favorite part of that is that the chain gimmick reminds me a lot of The Rig from Wild 9.
• SCEJ’s first Bleach game for the PS3 (somehow), Bleach: Soul Ignition, is heading for the console in June. Hurray, another Bleach game we won’t ever see in the states.
• We’ve mentioned the downright-wacky-looking Akiba’s Trip here (hint: it’s the one where you’re stripping vampires in Akihabara so they die on exposure to sunlight). Apparently you’ll be using some unusual weapons, too, including rice cookers and fisticuffs. Word has it an Xbox 360 was a weapon at one time, as well. I’d think you’d want to find an original Xbox instead.
• And you thought Gachitora was about a teacher dispensing ass-whoopings. Apparently you also break the wall around your students’ hearts, and in the process, strip their soul nude using the “Soul Nude Battle” system. Yeah. It’s like that.
• Capcom galore: Famitsu promises six new Capcom titles next week. Four of them we know – Street Fighter X Tekken, Asura’s Wrath, Resident Evil 3DS, and Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City. The others are unknown, but one might be the mysterious “DD,” otherwise known as Dragon’s Dogma, which has an equally mysterious countdown site and might just be a new Breath of Fire game. Meanwhile, this week, Famitsu scoops six games, one of which is another Capcom title, Monster Hunter Diary G for the PSP.
• More things coming West: while we still have no word on it in the US, Namco Bandai has filed a trademark for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter in Europe.
• Great news from Level-5 this week: the first Professor Layton game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, has now sold a million copies worldwide. The most recent entry in the series is for the 3DS and is officially the best-selling title on that platform with a quarter of a million copies sold. The entire series has sold 11 million games total, and the sixth game in the series is being worked on… me, I’m just waiting on that Professor Layton/Phoenix Wright crossover game.
• Power Rangers! All of them! Ever! Super Sentai Battle Cross for the Wii brings together four shows’ worth of sentai heroes to do battle with… I dunno, aliens from space. That seems likely. Namco has one Power Rangers game coming to the US, and the series it’s based on is part of Super Sentai Battle Cross, so maybe we’ve got a shot at this one, cheesy though it may be. Andriasang has some better early screenshots.
• Video #2: here’s the video for Key’s new visual novel, Rewrite.

  Rewrite has some interesting crew working on it, including Ryukishi07 of 7th Expansion, better known as the creator of the Higurashi no Nako Koro ni and Umineko no Nako Koro ni series, and Yuuto Tonokawa & Romeo Tanaka of Cross†Channel. The character designer for Rewrite is Itaru Hinoue, who was also the character designer for Air and Clannad. 4gamer has some more screenshots.

• And last but not least, Siliconera had an interview with Justin Potts, localization manager at Active Gaming Media, an East-to-West localization studio located in Japan on the sometimes strange experiences of being a localization studio. AGM handled a couple titles you might know, such as Demon’s Souls and the European language versions of No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise.